Satomi took the paper back and showed it to Onomita. “Is this Kekkai’s handwriting?”
The Head Key hardly needed to glance at it. “Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not a trap,” Koika insisted.
Mirei exchanged glances with Ashin. The Air Hand seemed as baffled as she was. Kekkai was on the enemy side, Mirei knew that much. But why was she sending Satomi messages? What kind of trap was she trying to set up? As the only unranked witch in a room full of Keys and Primes, she didn’t quite have the nerve to ask.
Satomi did not leave them in the dark for long. Laying the curl of paper down on the table, she addressed everyone in the council room. “Some of you know that I’ve recently been in communication with Kekkai, attempting to convince her to come back to our side. According to this note, I’ve succeeded. She wants out of Kalistyi.”
“And she wants us to send
you
, Mirei,” Koika cut in, her voice heavy with mistrust.
“The parameters she’s set require it,” Satomi added. “She names a town in Kalistyi—Tungral, near the Askavyan border—and an inn where she will presumably be waiting, three days from now. The only way to get there in time is by your magic, Mirei.”
Hearing that, Mirei had to laugh. “Not a very good trap, then. Unless she crammed a very good description of Tungral onto that slip of paper. I’m not about to jump blind. Besides, there’s no guarantee I could bring her back, not that way. I’ve never cast the spell on another person, or tried to take them with me. Hyoka’s been nervous about trying.”
Satomi gave her a sharp look. “Do you think you
could
do it?”
“Why ask?” Koika demanded. “We’re not sending her.”
“If Kekkai really wants to get out of there—” Onomita began hesitantly.
“If you believe
that
, you’re a fool.”
Satomi put up a hand to quell Koika. “I understand your suspicion; believe me, I share it. But if there’s any way we can turn this to our advantage, then I want to find it.
“Consider the possibilities. If Kekkai truly does want to come back—perhaps she’s had a falling out with Arinei; perhaps I convinced her on my own—then we cannot afford to miss this opportunity. Having her on our side would do us incalculable good.” Satomi inclined her head toward the Fire Head Key. “No offense intended, Onomita.”
The Key’s round face bloomed with a fervent smile. “None taken. I’d love to have her back.”
“So. If this is genuine, it’s a stroke of great good fortune for us.”
Koika instantly took up the countering side. “And if it’s not?”
“If it’s not,” Satomi said, “then we may have a chance to capture her.”
In the following silence, Mirei wondered if she was the only one who had known Satomi was going to suggest that.
The Void Prime continued on. “Kekkai has been with them for months. She will know things that could be useful to us. If this is genuine, we’ll have her help willingly; if not, Mirei can knock her over the head and bring her back here, and we’ll get the answers out of her by other means.” The witch captured in Angrim had been of little use; she’d been acting as the agent of someone they already knew was on Shimi’s side, but had been told no more than to search the city for a girl matching Indera’s description. They needed someone else to question. Someone in a position to know things.
Koika was not so sanguine about the possibility. “Saying that Mirei will knock her over the head is fine and well, but she’ll have a hard time of it if they’ve got a crowd of people waiting for her.”
“She defeated
us
, didn’t she?” Rana asked, a trace of bitterness audible in her voice. It was the first time she’d spoken since Satomi convened them in the council room.
Mirei snorted, forgetting to be polite. “Riding on the tail end of a miracle. I doubt I can arrange for that again.”
“I understand your concerns, Koika, but this might still be worth the risk,” Satomi said. “If we can find Mirei a good enough description to get there in the first place.”
“Is there anyone else nearby?” Onomita asked. “Someone, or more than one person, who we could send in place of Mirei? I’d have to check my records, but I don’t think I have anyone. The nearest woman in my Ray who I know to be on our side is Domeiyu, and she’s all the way over in Buvailat.”
“Would Kekkai go with anyone other than Mirei?” Ashin said dubiously.
Koika had clearly warmed to that idea, though. “We could put an illusion on them. Send a sketch of Mirei to whoever we use, have her cast an illusion, and then she can go to Tungral in Mirei’s place.”
“She’ll check for that,” Mirei said flatly. “As paranoid as she’ll be? She’d know it was an illusion before your impostor got through the door.”
Satomi was nodding. “Not to mention that I suspect she wants to leave instantaneously. No one else can do that, and maybe not even Mirei. Who can’t get there, because she doesn’t know the place.” Sighing, the Void Prime seated herself at the table. “I’ll have to try and get a message to her myself, telling her to change the plan.”
But Ashin sat forward in her chair, looking suddenly eager. “We can still get Mirei there, though. All we need is for
someone
to describe the place to her. Surely there’s a witch on our side who could provide that.”
The words were hardly out of the Key’s mouth before Mirei had an idea. “Or maybe someone other than a witch.”
Falya had mostly gotten over being intimidated by Mirei; two months of daily practices had changed fear into the respect due to a training-master. But the nine-year-old Kalistyin doppelganger was clearly startled to have Mirei coming to
her
for information.
“You said you grew up in the north, right?” Mirei asked, trying not to overwhelm the girl with her drive to get the information. Some Hunter tasks she was good at; coaxing timid subjects into talking wasn’t one of them. Intimidating, yes; coaxing, no. “Do you know Tungral?”
Her heart leaped when Falya nodded. “Da—I mean, that is—”
“You can call him ‘Da,’ ” Mirei said gently as the girl looked uncertain. “He raised you. That makes him your father, even if you’re not his seed.”
Falya managed a small smile. “Da used to go there a couple of times every season. Not in the spring, during the melt; too muddy then. But in the summer and fall, or in the winter, when he could sledge. Took furs to market there.”
“How about you? Did you ever go with your da?”
The girl shook her head, and Mirei’s heart fell. “Not even
once
?”
“I never left Lyonakh,” Falya said in a barely audible voice. “Not until Inei-mai brought me here.”
Mirei sighed. Maybe Inei was still at Starfall, or could be contacted easily; she might have passed through Tungral on her way to Lyonakh. Although a description based on having passed through once was not something she wanted to trust herself to.
Come on, there
has
to be someone who knows that town. The others will find someone
.
Then a thought came to her. “Falya, where’s Lyonakh?”
“In the mountains,” the girl said.
“But where? When your father went to Tungral, which way did he go? And how far?”
She thought it over. “Northwest. He would be gone for three days, when he went. One to go, one to market, and one to come back.”
A day’s journey. And that was with a wagon or sledge full of furs.
“Falya,” Mirei said, keeping a death grip on the reins of her excitement, “tell me what Lyonakh looks like.”
“They won’t be expecting it,” Mirei said when they were all reassembled. “If it’s a trap, they’ll be looking for me to come into Tungral directly. To the inn itself. They won’t look for me to be riding in from some mountain village.”
“But they’ll still see you coming,” Koika said. “Unless you disguise yourself and, like you said, they’ll be checking for that.”
Mirei had recovered her manners, having received a pointed look from Satomi not long before. She smiled politely at the Earth Prime, even as she inwardly shook her head at the blindness. “I don’t intend to use magic.”
Ashin looked approving. “I’ve said it before—you’d do well in Air.
That’s
adaptation.”
“There’s a good chance they’ll make the same assumption you did, Koika-chashi,” Mirei said, “which means they’re less likely to spot a mundane disguise.”
And
that’s
diplomacy. You people forget to think about nonmagical answers
.
Satomi had been tapping her long fingers on the table during this discussion; now she stopped and spoke up. “It’s a good plan. But if they have people waiting for you—”
“Then I sing myself out,” Mirei said. “I can probably buy enough time for that.”
“I’m not going to gamble you on ‘probably.’ You will only go if you can take someone else with you.”
Mirei blinked. “Aken—I don’t know if I can even do that.”
“So you try. If you can’t, then you would have to ride back from Kalistyi with Kekkai, and I won’t risk that. Nor will I send you to Kalistyi alone.”
Before she could protest, Mirei made the mistake of meeting Satomi’s eyes. The look there reminded her: she was not an independent agent anymore. She had responsibilities.
“Yes, Aken,” Mirei murmured reluctantly.
Koika looked marginally less worried now that Satomi had set her condition, but not much. “Who can we send with her, though?”
“Me, ”Ashin said.
Satomi shook her head. “Out of the question. You’re a Key; we need you.”
“With half my Path decamped to the other side? I’ll do you more good out there. You need to send a witch; Cousins won’t be enough. And not only am I an Air Hand and used to doing odd jobs, I’m also one of your more practiced subversives.” Ashin smiled, with only the faintest trace of bitterness. “I spent quite a while planning what I would do if witches showed up to take me prisoner, or to—”
She cut it short as Satomi’s eyes snapped to her. Mirei looked covertly at Onomita, but the Head Key appeared to be lost in speculation, and did not seem to have noticed.
“Name me someone better qualified,” Ashin finished.
“You’re too recognizable,” Koika said.
Mirei raised an eyebrow at her. “Ordinary disguises don’t stop working just because they’re put on a witch. Give me hair dye and some cosmetics, and I’ll give you back a woman you’ve never seen before.”
Satomi slapped one hand onto the table, not in anger, but to get them all back on track. “This is a moot point if Mirei can’t do it. So first we test that.”
“I’d recommend bringing Hyoka,” Mirei said. “She’ll cry for a year if she doesn’t get to watch me do this.”
The Void Key’s face ht up when she heard. “I’ve been wanting to try! I wasn’t sure that it was worth the potential risk, just to see if it worked. But if you have a good reason for doing it—”
They had not, of course, told her why they needed Mirei to translocate other people. Hyoka didn’t care, so long as she got to take notes. “I hope the risk turns out to be exaggerated,” Mirei said.
Hyoka nodded, beaming at Mirei and Ashin impartially. “Let me get my group together, then, and we can go to the translocation room—no
need
to do it there, of course; you could try it anywhere. But there we can observe you more easily. I’ll have a Cousin brought.”
Already in motion down the hallway, Mirei stopped dead in her tracks. “A Cousin?”
“To test your spell on.”
Mirei almost swallowed her tongue. “I’m not going to experiment on some helpless Cousin.”
Eyes wide in puzzlement, Hyoka said, “Why not? Who else are you going to experiment on?”
“Me,” Ashin said, with the same confident blandness she had used before.
“But you’re a
witch
,” Hyoka said. “And a Key. What if it goes wrong?”
Ashin shrugged. “Then it goes wrong. I’m volunteering.”
Mirei didn’t much want to lose Ashin, but she hoped not to lose
anybody
. And no way in the Void did she want to conscript somebody who wasn’t even a part of this. “If you can find another volunteer, I’ll use her. But no Cousins. We can’t even be sure it would work on one of them the same as it would work on a witch. And I need to know if I can move a witch.”
Unsurprisingly, there were no other volunteers. Hyoka looked ill at the thought of using a Key as the first subject of this experiment, but Ashin was doing a good enough job of projecting an assured demeanor that the other theory witches gathered in the room were willing to let it happen. Satomi and her fellow Primes watched in silence.
And if you don’t look too closely at them, you won’t even notice how tense they are
.
Before Satomi had begun sending Mirei out on diplomatic missions, the translocation room had been where the theorists observed her casting the spell, so they could see how it worked. It was a long hall, and she’d blinked from one end of it to the other more times than she could count, performing obediently—if grudgingly—on command. Now they would repeat the process, but with a new twist.
“Do you want to send her alone, or try to take yourself and her both?” Rigai asked, since Hyoka was exhibiting less than the usual enthusiasm for this latest trick.